Above-The-Line Costs

  

Let's do lunch, baby. You're a Hollywood producer on your way to the Paramount Studios with a budget in your hand for the next Brad Pitiful vehicle. You've carefully added the costs for union gaffers and grips, you know what it'll cost to blow up seventeen used trucks, and you know you'll have to shoot eighteen miles of film with a small army of camera men, lighting people, and street sweepers. All of these functionaries are below-the-line costs, because they get paid, and then they go away. Above-the-line players are people like the headliner, Brad Pitiful. Above-the-line also includes the director, the writer, and the producer...yeah, you.

Why the distinction? What is this mysterious line all about? Profit participation. Above-the-line players in Hollywood often take a salary cut, even working for minimum wage, in return for a cut of profits when the film comes to market. Famously, when Jack Nicholson played the Joker in Batman, he took a very small salary and a large profit chunk. That decision ended up netting him somewhere close to a hundred million bucks, in today's dollars. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

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Finance: What is Indirect Cost?0 Views

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Finance allah shmoop What is in direct cost All right

00:07

Well let's start like we try to always start with

00:10

the opposite Direct costs are the cost of the medal

00:14

for the engine block for this building direct costs are

00:18

the windshield wipers Direct costs are the glass The door

00:22

handles the pain the radio and the two gallon cup

00:25

holder for holding supersize slurpees Direct build one car and

00:29

you have to pay for this stuff in cash No

00:32

ambiguity Alright these air direct costs of building the car

00:36

But what about indirect costs Well indirect is a totally

00:40

different animal So like whether you build one car that

00:43

day or one hundred Well you have to heat the

00:45

building at least in january in detroit That heat is

00:48

an indirect cost of building the car And yes it's

00:52

not really Detroit it's pontiac michigan Or wherever But we're

00:55

just saying it's cold there What about the insurance he

00:57

had to carry for the car company or the lawyers

01:00

you employ Or the least back on the giant robot

01:03

car makers or the unpaid obligations into the union pension

01:08

fund All indirect costs So yeah it's all the stuff

01:12

You basically have to pay for in order to stay

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in business and avoid major lawsuits So you can continue

01:18

to pay for all those direct costs that actually go

01:21

into the making of your product Like the direct costs

01:24

you can think of as you know kind of things

01:26

that produce a gross margin And the indirect costs you

01:30

know kind of produce an operating margin Just saying All

01:33

right so just make sure that when you're building a

01:35

car you don't sell gps system that gives you in 00:01:38.489 --> [endTime] directions See that That would be bad This

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